Resurrection of the Dead and Final Judgment

This topic concerns the Christian hope of a general resurrection of the dead and the doctrine of a final judgment of all people by God.

Definition

The doctrine of the bodily raising of all the dead and God's final judgment of humanity.

Scope

This topic examines the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of the dead at the end of the age, the nature of the resurrection body (continuity and transformation, drawing on 1 Corinthians 15), the relation between Christ's resurrection and the general resurrection, the doctrine of a last judgment and the criteria of judgment, and the renewal of all creation. The presentation is descriptive, surveying the positions and their interpretive bases.

Core questions

• What does the resurrection of the body involve?
• How are continuity and transformation related in the resurrection body?
• What is the basis and outcome of the final judgment?
• How does individual destiny relate to the renewal of creation?

Key theories

Transformed bodily resurrection

The Pauline teaching, expounded by Wright, that the resurrection body is the present body transformed into a 'spiritual body' (animated by the Spirit), combining identity and continuity with radical glorification, not a non-physical survival.

Material continuity of the resurrection body

The medieval concern, traced by Bynum, to secure the identity of the risen body with the earthly one, prompting detailed discussion of how the same matter or form persists through death and resurrection.

History

Belief in a general resurrection developed in late Second Temple Judaism and became central to Christianity, confessed in the creeds ('the resurrection of the body'). Patristic and medieval theology, as Bynum shows, wrestled with how the same body could rise. The Enlightenment and modern thought favored the immortality of the soul, but twentieth-century biblical scholarship (Cullmann, Wright) recovered the centrality of bodily resurrection.

Debates

Identity of the resurrection body

How the risen body can be the same body as the one that died, given dispersal of matter, with answers ranging from reassembled matter to continuity of form or a God-given recreation.

Basis of final judgment

Whether judgment is according to works, according to faith, or by union with Christ, and how a final judgment coheres with justification by grace.

Key figures

• Paul the Apostle
• Thomas Aquinas
• Caroline Walker Bynum
• N. T. Wright

Seminal works

• wright2003
• bynum1995
• mcgrath2016

Frequently asked questions

Is the resurrection of the body the same as the immortality of the soul?

No; the resurrection of the body is the raising of the whole person to renewed bodily life by God's act at the end, whereas immortality of the soul concerns the survival of an immaterial part; Christian creeds confess the former.

What kind of body is the resurrection body?

Paul describes it as a 'spiritual body' that is imperishable, glorious, and powerful, understood by many interpreters as the present body transformed and animated by the Holy Spirit rather than as an immaterial spirit.